


the years have been short (but the days were long)

by thatsparrow



Series: outpost 359 [2]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Backstory, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 15:38:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15643776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: (Renee hasn't seen her husband in one hundred and thirteen days.)(Sometimes, Eiffel wants a drink so goddamn badly he thinks it's going to kill him.)(Hera has always fixed things, but she doesn't know how to fixthis.)(Hilbert wonders if Cutter had known it would end this way.)





	the years have been short (but the days were long)

**Author's Note:**

> still figuring out how I want to adapt major canon events to this AU, so in the meantime, here's some (longer than intended) character study and minor backstory
> 
> inspired by season 1, episode 11 -- "Am I Alone Now?"
> 
> title from "pink bullets" by the shins

Renee hasn't seen her husband in one hundred and thirteen days.

She's not a naive person—wouldn't have described herself as such before, and even if some measure of optimism had persisted, stuck fast like a sharp-edged shred of popcorn caught in the back of her throat, it certainly would have been worked loose by now—and so she knows he's probably dead. Likelier than him being alive, anyway. Maybe luckier than him being alive, too.

It could have happened in one of the riots when things first turned bad, streets crowded with the scared and the dead (and the ones that should've been dead, but weren't). Pavement painted with burned rubber tread-marks from cars that went swerving into storefronts, and so-called preppers (in other words, any asshole with a gun) shooting at whatever moved in their sightline. Blood running rivers down choked gutters, and bombs falling from military aircraft onto the major cities like pieces of plastic-wrapped candy spilling from the belly of a broken piñata. Children crying out, too, but for a very different reason. Dominik had been working on an assignment in San Francisco at the time, and Renee still remembers sitting in front of the TV in their DC apartment, phone ringing through to his voicemail for the seventeenth time, flipping through the channels for something— _anything_ —that might have told her he was okay. Instead, she'd seen New York on fire, and fighter jets turning figure-eight maneuvers over Houston, and the dead _everywhere_. Swarming over bodies fallen in the streets like wasps landing on a half-rotted piece of meat.  

(The power had gone out not long after, and Renee had been halfway thankful for the permission to look away from the images in front of her. It was also then that she'd understood there was no coming back from this, and so began figuring how she could get to the other side of the damn country to find Dominik herself).

But maybe it hadn't happened right at the start — maybe it'd been later. Dominik is smart enough, and strong enough, and could have gotten lucky enough—because by now, Renee knows that luck counts just as much for survival as gallons of gas in the tank or number of bullets in the magazine—that maybe he'd gotten out of San Francisco before it fell. Maybe he'd had the foresight to leave the city while that was still an option, or maybe he'd hunkered down in his Airbnb rental with blacked-out windows and the chain bolted across the door until things had turned quiet enough for him to run. Maybe he'd hitched a ride, or stolen a car, or salvaged a sturdy pair of boots and just walked until he found somewhere safe.

Likelier, though, that he'd never found any such place. That maybe someone had shot him over the last orange-plastic bottle of painkillers at a small town pharmacy. Maybe he'd met up with folks who seemed trustworthy until they had a knife to his neck in the middle of the night and stolen his supplies and his coat and whatever-the-fuck-else they'd wanted before leaving him for dead. Or he'd cut his leg while sneaking through a barbed-wire fence and infection had set in. Or a particularly bad strain of the flu that he didn't have the antivirals or immune system to fight off.

Maybe he'd been bit.

Sometimes, when the waters are rough and the _Hephaestus_ 's engines have broken down for the third time in a week and Renee could count on one hand the number of hours she's slept, she closes her eyes and can't help but see Dominik collapsed on a sidewalk, or slumped down between the aisles of a Rite-Aid, the dead clustered around him like starved locusts. Sometimes, she seems him being cornered, or stumbling at the exact wrong moment, and all these sets of hands and teeth ripping away pieces of his skin and muscle down to the bone.

If that's how it happened, the best Renee can hope for is that he bled out fast.

(She does her best not to think about what would have happened afterwards, when some new and subverted spark of life would have come back to his limbs, and he would have lifted up his chewed-through body like a marionette getting tugged upright by fraying strings. Shuffling forward on uncoordinated feet and groping around with clumsy hands and this white film across the eyes where _her_ Dominik used to live. Falling teeth-first on some other poor stranger with a hungry urgency, or slowly starving out in a California field off the freeway like a forgotten scarecrow, and Renee doesn't know which one she'd want more for him. Doesn't know which one would be more merciful.)

There are days, though, when the weather is nice or the desalinator runs without a hitch or they find extra fuel for the _Hephaestus_ on a supply run, when Renee lets herself be selfish and remember back to the time before. Sits up on deck with a glass of powdered pink lemonade and thinks back to the life she'd had with Dominik — takeout from their favorite pizza place around the corner in DC, or pouring two glasses of cheap red wine in their too-small apartment, or lazy picnics at the park on a Sunday afternoon. Today, she thinks about when they'd road-tripped out to Wyoming to spend the week in Yellowstone, waking with the sun and drinking instant coffee out of blue aluminum mugs. The summer sun taking a paintbrush to Renee's shoulders and Dominik's shirt stuck to his back with sweat, and it'd been so beautiful and so fucking _green_ that Renee thought she could drown in it.

She thinks about the afternoon they'd spent hiking out to a waterfall, and Dominik diving in even though the water couldn't have been more than fifty degrees, smiling up at her and telling her to join him through chattering teeth. He'd photographed the whole trip on a battery-powered digital camera—the same way he always did—turning the lens on anything that caught his eye, or setting the self-timer and pulling Renee flush against his side, flashing a grin as they'd posed in front of every vista that Yellowstone had to offer.  

Renee used to tease him about that, how he could never go anywhere without recording a play-by-play and, really, Dominik, are you going to live _every_ vacation through a camera lens? But he'd just smile back at her, easy as anything, and then they'd get home, and he'd filter the photos down to his favorites, and pick up an envelope of prints from the Walgreens two blocks over, and Renee would spend the next few days assembling them into a scrapbook.

(And—god—Renee can just _hear_ Eiffel's words if he ever found that out. _You, Minkowski?_ —and he'd say it with that soft 'w' sound, like he always does— _scrapbooking? What, did that happen on a dare?_ Please _tell me you use those scissors that make a fancy border_. Which, _no_ , Eiffel. No scalloped edges or patterned construction paper or pieces of decorative Scotch tape, just Renee's neat handwriting spelling out a short descriptor along the edge of each photo. By now, they have a whole shelf of the things in their living room, dating back to that first trip in Paris where they'd met.

Well. _Had_ a whole shelf of the things, anyway.)

Part of Renee had thought about taking one of them with her as she'd packed to leave their apartment for the last time, but that had just been a whisper of an idea. The larger, relentlessly practical part of her had spoken up louder. Pointed out that she'd need to save room for the essentials, not mementos, and that there was no point in hanging onto a keepsake if it cost her a shot at survival.

But she couldn't stomach the idea of leaving it all behind, so she'd compromised and chosen one for the road—not from any of the scrapbooks, funnily enough, but from a frame in their bedroom—slipping the photo out from behind the sheet of glass and into the front pocket of her backpack. In it, Renee is smiling at the camera through the sun in her eyes, dressed up sharp in her pilot's uniform. Dominik stands at her left, wearing one of his two suits, and he's staring at Renee with this look of overwhelming, unmitigated fondness. God, Renee remembers taking that photo so fucking _clearly_. It was one of the rare times—arguably, even, the _only_ time—that Dominik had forgotten a camera of his own, and so they'd had to swing by a corner store to pick up a disposable one, flagging down the nearest pedestrian to take the photo, her and Dominik posing in the middle of the courthouse steps.

These days, it's pinned to the wall in Renee's quarters on the _Hephaestus_ , wrinkled in a half-dozen places from weeks of travel, and smeared at the edges from her fingerprints, but she doesn't particularly care.

Hopes that, if it's the last thing she sees before she falls asleep, maybe she'll dream of him.

(She rarely gets that lucky.)

 

—

 

Sometimes, Eiffel wants a drink so goddamn _badly_ he thinks it's going to kill him.

Not literally, of course—people usually die _from_ drinking, not the other way around—but, some days, Eiffel's not actually sure that it won't be the end of him. Some days, he feels the ache for it all the way down to his fucking _bones_. Daydreams about taking a running dive off the deck and swimming to the shore and holing up in the nearest liquor store so he can drink until he doesn't remember that he's supposed to be cautious, or afraid, or grieving. _Fuck_ , wouldn't it feel good. And, hey, if that's how he ends up going, that might be okay — there are certainly worse ways to die, and Eiffel's pretty sure he's seen most of them firsthand.

(Lung cancer isn't actually sounding that bad, these days, in terms of what could kill him. Eiffel thinks that he wouldn't mind dying of lung cancer, all things considered.)

But he always talks himself down off the ledge before he's taken that desperate, Icarus leap. And there's no alcohol anywhere on the ship—or, if there is, Hera and the others are keeping it a closely guarded secret, and Eiffel doesn't know whether to hate them or love them for it—so that just leaves him with the wanting.

Even though there are days when it doesn't feel endurable, Eiffel knows that this is a pain he can handle. He'd stayed sober in prison, hadn't he? And that's worth at least one pat on the back, when booze was easier to find than mold between the bathroom tiles or cockroaches burrowed into cement cracks. He'd done it then, so he knows he can get through it this time.

(Never mind that in prison, he was still freshly scarred by the shame of what had happened. Of what he'd _done_. And shame—as Eiffel learned—is a powerful fucking motivator.)

He wants to drink more than ever, but Eiffel has _always_ wanted to drink. He's an alcohol — wanting to drink is part of the job requirement. So the craving isn't new, the circumstances are just a little different. It does suck that he can't go to a meeting on his worse days, when he needs a support system that Hera—despite being his closest friend on the _Hephaestus_ —just can't give him, but Eiffel gets through it. _Has_ to get through it. If he can learn to work on a fishing boat, and get used to dealing with fucking _zombies_ , then he can stay sober. No question.

(There are nights when Eiffel wonders if the bottle of isopropyl alcohol in the makeshift first-aid kit would do the trick, but that's just idle curiosity. Really. He's not going to _do_ anything about it.)

To get through it, Eiffel distracts himself. Lays in his bunk, eyes closed and flat on his back, and mentally runs through the entirety of _Die Hard_. Helps Minkowski prepare dinner and sees if he can remember all the lyrics to "We Didn't Start the Fire". Does laundry with a rationed amount of detergent and tries to name the Best Picture winners for the last fifty years. Writes down the names of his elementary school teachers, or teaches himself Elvish from the back few pages of a battered copy of Tolkien they'd found in one of the storage closets.

Takes it one day—and one potential relapse—at a time. If he can survive the end of the fucking world, he can do _this_.

Pointedly does not think about all that he's lost, and all the pain that drinking would help him forget.

 

—

 

Hera has always fixed things.

When she was younger, and had Little Mermaid band-aids taped across her knees and her hair pulled back in braids, she would lie on the living room rug and open up the back of her light-up toys. Followed the wires and circuits with her fingers and disassembled the thing piece by piece to learn how it all fit together. Her dad would sit next to her, ostensibly to make sure she didn't swallow anything or hurt herself, but usually Hera just wanted to borrow his Phillips-head screwdriver.

As she got older, she started spending more time at her mom's garage, crouching down on the cement while her mom disappeared up to the waist beneath a red '96 VW. Standing underneath a big Chevy SUV propped up on the hydraulic lift, her mom pointing out pieces of the machinery and quizzing Hera on what they did. Standing on a stepstool and leaning over the hood of a beat-up Ford truck with paint rusting away on the door, engine oil up to her elbows and her mom hovering nearby.

(When Hera was fifteen, her mom said that she was better than half the mechanics at the garage. She'd said it with the inflection of a joke, but Hera knew she wasn't really kidding.)

So Hera has always fixed things, but she doesn't know how to fix _this_.

Not the _Hephaestus_ — though that's certainly no walk in the park either, and some days it does feel like she's only holding the ship together with duct tape and a prayer (leave it to Captain Minkowski to have chosen a ship with engines built when West Germany was still a thing), but it hasn't hit the point of unrepairable _yet_ , and Hera's fairly confident she can keep it that way. So, no, it's not the ship that Hera doesn't know how to fix — the place where she's struggling is with the _crew_. Hera knows engines better than her own two hands, grew up teething on the plastic grip of a pair of wire strippers (either because her dad wasn't paying close enough attention or because her mom left the toolkit open, depending on who was asked) but she has always been downright _lousy_ when it comes to dealing with people.

Take the Captain, for one. It's not like Hera hasn't seen the photo that Minkowski keeps pinned to the wall (they share sleeping quarters, okay? It's a little hard to miss) and she can figure easily enough that the man in the photo is the Captain's _husband_ (which, really? The Captain? _Married_? Never would've called that) but it's not like Hera knows what to _say_ about any of it. Sorry about your presumably dead husband? Hey, Captain, is there something in your eye or are you grieving? She usually ends up not saying anything (probably for the best, as "how are you adjusting to life as a widow" doesn't make for _great_ dinner conversation), but then, sometimes, she'll catch Minkowski with this thousand-yard stare in her eyes, loneliness and exhaustion and _pain_ wrapped up all in one, and Hera doesn't know what the _hell_ she's supposed to do about that.

Because (and don't _ever_ tell the Captain that she said this) Hera worries about her.

Not always, and not even very often. Just on occasion, when she glances over at Minkowski and sees _that_ look. Sometimes, Hera catches it when Minkowski is up on deck, leaning against the railing with her hands wrapped tight around the metal, staring down at the waves like it wouldn't be the worst thing if she let herself fall. Sometimes, they'll be camped out on a supply run in the kitchen of an emptied-out restaurant, stretched out in salvaged sleeping bags, and Minkowski will stare up at the ceiling tiles like she's just _done_. Hera figures it's in those moments that Minkowski is thinking about her husband. Wondering what's the point of putting herself through all this pain when none of them know what a better future might look like—or, hell, if it even exists—and so why not let go? What's really keeping her here?

In those moments, Hera wants to take Minkowski by the shoulders and give her an answer, but she never knows what to say. If the Captain was built of metal and gears and a motor, Hera would know _exactly_ what to do, but people are (unfortunately) _so_ much more complicated, and Hera is at a loss. She wants to sit the Captain down and remind her that none of them—not her, or Eiffel, or even Hilbert—would still be alive if they hadn't met Minkowski, and doesn't that count for something? Can't that be enough? Sure, they've lost their loved ones—like Minkowski's husband, or Hera's parents—but they all have each other, and why can't they hold onto that?

That's what Hera's doing, at least, and look at her. She's still here, and doing just _fine_. Why can't it be enough for the rest of them?   

 

—     

 

Dmitri—no, that's wrong. Alexander. _Hilbert_ —wonders if Cutter had known it would end this way.

"I'm offering you the opportunity for _innovation_ , Doctor," Cutter had said, back when Alexander Hilbert _was_ still Dmitri Ilyich Volodin, and Cutter had sat him down at that fancy conference table in a room with white marble walls, the picture of a slick-suited businessman with expensive tastes. Dmitri knew men like that well. Had spat at their cars when he was a child from the window of his parents’ apartment building. Their radiator broken for the third time in as many days and men like _that_ walking around the city in mink-collared coats.

And now Dmitri was meeting with one of those men, sitting on the same side of this long table as if equals. Like Dmitri could forget that he came from a one-bedroom apartment in Volgograd, like he could pretend that his English was not broken by an accent. The table was polished bright enough that Dmitri could have seen his face in it if he'd looked closely—if he'd wanted a reminder of how very little he belonged in a building like this—but he hadn't, and so he'd kept his hands folded neatly on the table's surface, and said "no" to Cutter's offer of a coffee blend with words Dmitri hadn't known, and waited for this man with the smiling shark's teeth and flat black eyes to _get to the point_.

“Innovation, Doctor, is the name of the game here. I’m inviting you to be on the forefront of scientific exploration, to join a project that would—and I mean this very literally—change the face of _the world._ ” Cutter had smiled, and Dmitri had thought no promise of a brighter future should sound quite so double-edged. “And isn’t that what all scientists want? To change the world?”

 _No, Cutter,_ Hilbert would think later, after he'd given up his birth name and felt the blood of millions on his hands. _Not like_ this.

But at the time—and _damn_ his pride—he had been curious, at the least. Flattered, even, at Cutter's interest in him (though part of him already suspected that Cutter's interest was as fickle and dangerous a thing as a capricious child training a magnifying glass on an insect). Then Cutter had mentioned the price for the work — had even mentioned that the money could be used to pay for Olga’s treatments, as if he’d known there was no way Dmitri could refuse such an offer. And, indeed, Dmitri was prepared to say "yes" before Cutter had mentioned a single word about the specifics of the project. Before Dmitri had even heard the word _Decima_.

“A virus that could unlock human potential,” Cutter had said—whatever that was supposed to mean. “Revolutionize the nature of society, completely redevelop the way that humans grow and evolve. A future our ancestors never could have _dreamed_ of.”

Later, after he had watched the evacuation of the Goddard labs, he would think, _is this the bright future that you had in mind, Cutter?_ When he was crouched down in the defunct freezer of a Safeway, watching shadowed hands fumbling through the plastic sheets, he would hold his breath and wonder, _when you talked about "revolution", did you mean "collapse"?_ And, weeks later, when he'd been taken aboard the _Hephaestus_ , and still couldn't shake the image of seeing a man ripped open like a piece of rotted fruit, he would close his eyes and ask Cutter's ghost, _when you offered up those fancy words about evolution and human potential, was_ this _the path you intended? Are you proud of your efforts to play God, Cutter?_

(Sometimes, he hears Cutter's voice in response. _And what about the part that_ you _played in all of this, Doctor? I may be the man who had the idea for the atomic bomb, but do you really think there's no place in hell for the one who built it_?

Hilbert could laugh at that. _No, Cutter. I am well aware of my own complicity, and I know that no measure of punishment could absolve me from my sins_. _I have no illusions of being forgiven_.)

Cutter had never told him the true purpose of the Decima experiments—at least, nothing more specific than the lofty platitudes from that first meeting—but, privately, Hilbert is sure that extending human lifespans had always been the underlying intent of the project. Likely for Cutter's benefit, first — he always seemed the sort of man who believed that death was beneath him.

If so, how Cutter had indeed gotten his wish.

But Hilbert goes back and forth on whether this was truly what Cutter _wanted_. Cutter hadn't broken the quarantine protocols, or released the virus into the cities, but he had pushed the project to human trials faster than Hilbert had wanted. Had turned on Hilbert one afternoon when Hilbert pushed back against the rushed timetable, all false good cheer dropped in an instant and Cutter's voice sharp enough to draw blood. _I wasn't asking, Doctor, and this isn't a negotiation. I am giving you an order, and I expect you to follow it. If not, you and I need to have a separate conversation._

Eventually, Hilbert had agreed. Then, well — the rest had followed.

Was that evidence enough of Cutter's intent? Could he have known how truly wrong those first trials would go? Had he predicted the unprecedented mutations that would follow?

Part of Hilbert is willing to believe that Cutter is a man who would detonate the world to refashion it in his own image, but he can't imagine Cutter being so fundamentally _reckless_. Gambling that a future would exist for himself when survival would become such an uncertain thing.

Cutter _can't_ have intended this.

He can't have, because if he didn't—and if he's still alive—then there's still some hope of undoing all the harm and all the mistakes made at Hilbert's hand. Once, Cutter had sat him down, full of fake paternal kindness and false cheer, and invited him to help reshape the world.

Hilbert has to believe it can happen again.

**Author's Note:**

> i like to imagine that minkowski and mr. koudelka would be very soft together. fight me.


End file.
